Washington (CNN) - Senators are scheduled to begin voting on a series of measures at midnight Friday before leaving Washington to return home and campaign for re-election.

The most significant vote will be on a bill to fund the federal government for the next six months, putting off any threat of a government shutdown until early next year. That bill, which has already been approved in the House and is expected to easily pass the Senate, will go to the president for his signature.

Washington (CNN) - President Barack Obama will likely address the recent unrest in the Muslim world, including in Libya, when he speaks to the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, according to administration officials.

He is expected to once again reject the views in the controversial video that is thought to have instigated the violence that resulted in the death of four Americans in Benghazi, one official said, while underscoring that violence is never acceptable.FULL POST

Concord, New Hampshire (CNN) – On Tuesday, as a secretly recorded video flared up problems for Mitt Romney, Vice President Joe Biden largely held his fire. But by Friday, the vice president refused to hold his tongue any longer - and pounced.

Over two campaign events in New Hampshire, Biden mounted a full-throated response: he questioned how Romney could “be so profoundly wrong about America” and claimed the former Massachusetts governor “does not understand” the middle class.FULL POST

New York (CNNMoney) - After months of criticism for saying he would release only two years of tax returns, Mitt Romney on Friday put out a report from his accountants about taxes he has paid over 20 years.

(CNN) - Mitt Romney responded in an interview broadcast Friday to recent conservative criticism of his campaign's direction, saying his effort to win the presidency is on the right track.

"I've got a very effective campaign," he said in the CBS News interview. "It's doing a very good job. But not everything I say is elegant."

The remark about his word choice was in reference to secretly recorded clips of fundraiser he held last spring which were posted online this week. In his remarks at the fundraiser, Romney said 47% of the electorate views themselves as victims, are dependent upon government services, and will vote for President Barack Obama.

The Romney campaign responded aggressively, with the candidate holding a press conference hours after the comments emerged. But the comments, Romney's response to them, and his criticism of Obama over violence in the Arab world in the previous week was all fuel to a narrative advanced by some conservative thought leaders.

Peggy Noonan, whose conservative columns appear in The Wall Street Journal, this week described Romney's campaign as "incompetent," and stood by her comments in a Thursday Column. Her word choice, she said, was "only because I was being polite. I really meant 'rolling calamity.' "

And Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative publication The Weekly Standard, likened Barack Obama and Mitt Romney as "two presidential candidates who - when they thought they were speaking privately to their fellow 1 percenters - have shown contempt for fellow Americans."

In his CBS interview, Romney pushed back against charges that his 47% comment meant he was writing off nearly half of the country.

"I want to make it very clear, I want to help 100 percent of the American people," he said, echoing a new line he debuted on the campaign trail this week after the fundraiser video emerged.

Asked if he would apply his skills turning around businesses - a reputation which he and his supporters tout - Romney said his campaign "doesn't need a turnaround."

He also pushed back on recent national and battleground state polling which appears to give Obama a slight edge over Romney, either within or just outside of the sampling error for each survey.
"We've got a campaign which is tied with an incumbent president to the United States," Romney said.

(CNN) - Mitt Romney's Friday release of some tax documents came after months of pressure on the Republican candidate to make public more of his financial picture.

Republicans urging further release hoped additional documents would put the issue of what Romney paid to rest. Democrats speculated that hidden within the unreleased years were politically embarrassing secrets, with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid claiming he had been told that Romney had not paid taxes over the course of a decade.FULL POST

(CNN) – Sen. Harry Reid said nothing of his earlier claims that Mitt Romney had not paid taxes over a ten-year span in a Friday statement joining Democrats in responding to Romney's release of tax-related documents on Friday.

The Nevada Democrat and Senate majority leader called Romney's accounting "galling" and said the documentation "reveals that Mitt Romney manipulated one of the only two years of tax returns he's seen fit to show the American people – and then only to 'conform' with his public statements."FULL POST

Washington (CNN) - The House Ethics Committee prepared Friday to dismiss charges of alleged wrongdoing against California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, ending a tumultuous investigation that lasted roughly three years and may have cost taxpayers up to $1.3 million.

Waters has been accused of improperly seeking government assistance for OneUnited Bank, a minority-owned bank in which her husband held a financial interest, during the 2008 financial meltdown. The bank received $12 million in bailout funds.

New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) – Rep. Paul Ryan was prepared when seniors first responded inhospitably to his remarks about repealing Obamacare at the AARP conference in New Orleans Friday.

"I had a feeling there would be mixed reaction so let me get into it," the Republican vice presidential nominee said, after his first line about repealing President Barack Obama's signature health care law was met with audible boos throughout the large convention room floor.FULL POST